This TOD policy addresses multiple goals: improving the costeffectiveness of regional investments in new transit expansions, easing the Bay Area’s chronic housing shortage, creating vibrant new communities, and helping preserve regional open space. The policy ensures that transportation agencies, local jurisdictions, members of the public and the private sector work together to create development patterns that are more supportive of transit.

The San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART) is the steward of a large-scale public investment, which includes important real property assets essential to BART’s operation. These assets also contribute to the ongoing financial viability of the transit system. Recent system extensions and federal, state and regional policy direction to concentrate growth around transit further enhances the value of these assets. By promoting high quality, more intensive development on and near BART-owned properties, the District can increase ridership, support long-term system capacity and generate new revenues for transit. Also, such development creates attractive investment opportunities for the private sector and facilitates local economic development goals.

The Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS) and the Charlotte Mecklenburg Planning Commission (CMPC) understand transit’s relationship to land use and have created transit station types as an urban design framework to integrate CATS’ station location and design responsibilities with CMPC’s station area planning process. There are 64 stations anticipated in CATS’ five corridor Transit System Plan. Together, the land areas influenced by these 64 stations comprise 50 square miles of land, an area larger than the entire City of San Francisco. With such a large area influenced by transit it is imperative that the location design joint development polices, and land development regulations are developed in a way that are supportive of the variety conditions within the greater Charlotte region.

In 1999, the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) District Board, in California, adopted a policy creating a framework for BART system expansion that placed new emphasis on cost-effectiveness, ridership generation, multimodal access, transit-oriented development, local partnerships, and the use of appropriate transit technologies. The board directed staff to develop criteria and a detailed process for implementing these goals. The resulting expansion planning process and criteria for the BART system, adopted by the BART board in December 2002, are described along with the method used to develop the criteria and process. Some of the implementation issues that have arisen are assessed.

The New Transit Town brings together experts in planning, transportation, and sustainable design to examine the first generation of TOD projects and derive lessons for the next generation. Topics include a typology of projects appropriate for different contexts and scales; the planning, policy and regulatory framework of "successful" projects; obstacles to financing and strategies for overcoming those obstacles; issues surrounding traffic and parking; the roles of all the actors involved and the resources available to them; and performance measures that can be used to evaluate outcomes. There are case studies of Arlington, Virginia (the Rosslyn-Ballston Corridor); Dallas (Mockingbird Station and Addison Circle); Atlanta (Lindbergh Center); San Jose (Ohlone-Chynoweth); and San Diego (Barrio Logan).

Neighborhood type matters when we try to explain variations in public transit commuting. We found this statistical link over a sample of all census tracts in the four largest California metro areas. In this research, we used statistical cluster analysis to identify twenty generic neighborhood types. The variables used in the analysis included broad indicators of location and population density, street design, transit access and highway access. Once identified, the denser neighborhoods had higher transit use, other things equal. Yet, what distinguishes the research is that we did not use a simple density measure to differentiate neighborhoods. Rather, density was an important ingredient of our neighborhood - type definition -- which surpassed simple density in explanatory power.

Creating Transit Station Communities: A Transit-Oriented Development Workbook has been prepared to help local jurisdictions and transit agencies in the central Puget Sound region achieve transit-oriented land use development. The workbook focuses on the role that high capacity transit stations can play in stimulating and supporting local land use changes. The overall purpose for promoting transit-oriented land use development at transit stations is to increase regionwide transit use and support local growth management objectives. For the purposes of this workbook, high capacity transit stations include light rail and commuter rail stations as well as major bus transit centers and ferry terminals. These transit facilities provide locations that can generally support an intensive mix of residential and commercial development close to the station. Transit-oriented development is usually focused on land within one-quarter mile to one-half mile radius of the station facility —…

To help craft policies that will support transit-oriented development around light rail stations, the City of Seattle’s consultant team conducted small group interviews over the course of a day with fifty individuals involved in the design, development, and financing of new housing, retail spaces, and offices. The interviews helped identify some of the opportunities and obstacles for more dense, pedestrian-oriented development around transit stations. While the individuals interviewed were not of one mind, certain themes emerged about the development potential in station areas and the appropriate direction of future City policies.